Janis Laizans/Reuters
A hostage freed by Hamas described the nightmare she lived through after being abducted from her home in Israel and taken to a “spider’s web” of tunnels below Gaza.
Yocheved Lifshitz, 85, said Tuesday that she was beaten with sticks as she was taken by motorcycle from Kibbutz Nir Oz on Oct. 7. She was finally released along with her 79-year-old neighbor Nurit Cooper on Monday, making them just the third and fourth people of the more than 200 kidnapped by Hamas to be set free since the attacks began earlier this month. Lifshitz’s husband, 83, is still being held hostage.
Speaking from a hospital in Tel Aviv where she is now recovering, Lifshitz’s daughter Sharone helped to translate as Lifshitz told reporters she had been “through hell” over the course of the two weeks in which she was taken and held captive. “They went rampant in our kibbutz,” she said, according to Haaretz. “I was taken hostage. They laid me on a motorcycle and sped through a thicket.”